What the Hell is 'Egregious' Anyway?

Everybody who has studied Law has heard this word, at least in passing. Hardly anybody else has!

​In current usage it means exceptionally bad, gross, or wicked. Even if you knew that, you probably didn't know that the meaning has flipped completely in the last few hundred years. The latin 'egregius' just means 'standing out from the flock', and this had always meant 'excellent' or 'exemplary'. Then, in Elizabethan English it came to mean the exact opposite, although of course the sense of 'being set apart' is retained.

The Oxford English Dictionary opines that the shift in meaning was a result of ironic use. The use of irony is highly developed in English and can be just another trap for the beginner!

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